Infant mortality and concepts of hygiene. Strategies and consequences in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic: the example of Berlin

Abstract

The fight against infant mortality followed the guidelines of “hygiene” and their modifications into social, racial, and national hygiene. In Berlin, the campaign to promote infant hygiene began in 1904, when the municipal authorities started to create infant care centers tentatively under the auspices of a charitable association. During and after the First World War, the authorities expanded this campaign to reflect a growing commitment to the principles of social and racial hygiene, which aimed both to improve social conditions that worked against the health of children and to strengthen the constitution of the race. While racial hygienists feared that social measures for the weak would promote degeneration by encouraging their survival, social hygienists argued that it was impossible to distinguish between “fit” and “unfit” in early childhood, and eugenics became increasingly important. Social hygiene as a means of prevention was reduced to a “systematical registration” of the more or less fit individuals. This development and the eugenic background of infant care created a link to the concept of selection in Nazi Germany.